The In­ter­change As­so­ci­a­tion in Tai­wan said in a state­ment on Wed­nes­day that it will change its name to the Ja­pan-Tai­wan Ex­change As­so­ci­a­tion be­gin­ning on Jan 1, ac­cord­ing to the Ky­odo News Agency.

The or­ga­ni­za­tion was es­tab­lished in 1972 when Ja­pan nor­mal­ized diplo­mat- ic re­la­tions with the Chi­nese main­land and cut “diplo­matic ties” with Tai­wan.

“China urged Ja­pan to abide by prin­ci­ples un­der the 1972 Sino-Ja­panese Joint State­ment and the prom­ises it has made so far,” Hua said. “China’s stance on the Tai­wan ques­tion has al­ways been con­sis­tent and clear. We are strongly op­posed to any at­tempt to cre­ate ‘two Chi­nas’ or ‘ one China, one Tai­wan’ ”.

She added that Ja­pan “should not cre­ate new dis­tur­bances in the China-Ja­pan re­la­tion­ship”.

In the 1972 joint state- ment, Ja­pan said it fully un­der­stood and re­spected the Chi­nese govern­ment’s po­si­tion that Tai­wan is part of China.

In 2014, the two sides also reached a four-point con­sen­sus — which aimed to im­prove the ties soured by Ja­pan’s il­le­gal pur­chase of China’s Diaoyu Is­lands in 2012 — that reaf­firmed the 1972 state­ment.

Lyu Yaodong, an ex­pert on Ja­panese for­eign pol­icy at the Chi­nese Academy of So­cial Sci­ences, said Tokyo’s “petty move” in re­nam­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion in Tai­wan is a sig­nal that it is try­ing to fur- ther im­prove its re­la­tion­ship with Taipei at the pos­si­ble ex­pense of harm­ing ties with Bei­jing.

“This will not hap­pen if Ja­pan hon­estly im­ple­ments the four-point con­sen­sus. How­ever, the move re­flects a lack of sin­cer­ity in Ja­pan’s ef­forts to ease the bi­lat­eral re­la­tion­ship as it has boasted,” he said.

Da Zhi­gang, a Ja­panese stud­ies re­searcher at the Hei­long jiang Provin­cial Academy of So­cial Sci­ences, said Ja­pan is rous­ing the en­thu­si­asm of Tai­wan sep­a­ratists by adding the names of Ja­pan and Tai­wan to the ti­tle.

“The move, which caters to Tai­wan’s pur­suit of more in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, will de­te­ri­o­rate the cur­rent se­vere sit­u­a­tion across the Tai­wan Straits af­ter US pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s call with Tai­wan leader Tsai Ing-wen” on Dec 2, he said.

We are strongly op­posed to any at­tempt to cre­ate ‘two Chi­nas’ or ‘one China, one Tai­wan’. ” Hua Chun­y­ing, spokes­woman for For­eign Min­istry